Clear Shrimp, Hair Algae, and Snails OH MY!

[Cubscruff]

So here's the update on a tank that I started about a year ago.
I was brand new to the site and very excited for my new supershrimp! I set up my tank and was off to a rocky start wondering when, and even if, any algae would grow in my tank. Slowly but surely the algae did grow and I was excited to get my shrimp! I originally bought 13 or so and had about 5 die off, it was disheartening to say the least and I became very nervous I would lose more so I began reading my parameters (salinity and pH and temperature) over and over worried I might kill off the rest. Eventually I became less worried about the parameters because they seemed fine, sometimes I would see only 5 shrimp, next I would count 8, I didn't know where they could be hiding in the tank, and I didn't ask. In fact I left the tank to it's own devices for quite some time. So here I am with a few worries:

1) Some of my shrimp are clear, I mean clear clear, totally transparent you can only see them if you catch them just right, is this a nutrient deficiency, should I be worried?

2) I have a bunch of algae and I'm afraid it's too much! I don't want to hurt my shrimp by overfeeding, all of my holey rocks are basically completely covered by algae.

3) My Malaysian trumpet snails are not doing a good job controlling my algae but they're doing a fine job reproducing (I'm actually not that mad, I'm pretty impressed that a few snails hid for months under the sand and came back in the dozens) but is this ok for the shrimp?

and 4) the most important reason I'm so worried is that, somehow, by some mishap, my tank is loaded with baby supershrimp and I'm afraid between hair algae that I'm scooping up that keeps coming back, uncontrolled algae in general, a booming snail population, and the adult shrimp being clear, I'm going to lose all the baby shrimp.

Any advice is welcomed.

[Varanus]

Some shrimp will naturally be clear all the time, so that on its own may not be much to worry about. Also, at least with other kinds of shrimp they often darken in response to dark substrate, so yours may be paler because of the largely pale substrate.

The shrimp out compete the snails when it comes to food (aside from food under the substrate), so if snail numbers are growing it means there is more than enough food for everyone.

Are you feeding at all? If so I would stop until the algae has substantially gone down.

It'll take time and effort, but if you want to get rid of the hair algae I think I have a method that would work and not endanger the shrimp. You can remove all the big clumps pretty easily with plastic tweezers and such, but its the remaining fragments that are the problem. For those you can use a turkey baster and a very fine mesh aquarium net. Just balance the net on the corner of the tank, then use the baster to suck up every bit of hair algae you can find and squirt it back out in the net. The water will go through the mesh and back into the tank, and once you get all the hair algae you can you can dump it in the garbage or sink. And if you accidentally suck up any baby shrimp then you can notice in the net and put them back in the tank no problem.

Chances are you'll have to do this again and again for weeks but eventually other algae will take over and the hair algae should stop coming back or at least be easily manageable (i.e. just a few strands you take out every week or two). Or at least that's the theory, I've never actually dealt with hair algae myself (I used this method to get rid of Mustafa's macroalgae as I wanted to replace it with Mustafa's moss balls).

[Cubscruff]

Thank you so much Varanus for your response! I know it doesn't sound true but I haven't fed the tank since I established it, in fact the only time I did was just a week or two ago when I noticed the baby shrimp and it was about 3 of the small beta fish food (not flakes the small kernels). But I will definitely make sure not to feed at all for a while.

[Mustafa]

Continue to *not* feed them. Judging by how much algae growth you have in your tank I'd say that you may not have to feed for a year or more. Even though you may not have fed them since you established the tank obviously nutrients entered the tank somehow. My guess is via the rocks and/or substrate. In such an environment shrimp don't fully color out. It's amazing how the same "clear" shrimp in such a tank can become bright red in another tank with better conditions. I found that out accidentally when I tried finding true "white" Supershrimp in my tanks again to selectively breed them. I put them in another tank (over 10 of them) and a few weeks later every single one of them was *bright* red...very intensely red.

So...just leave the tank alone and things will take care of themselves over time (i.e. all that algae will disappear and turn into snail and shrimp biomass, and your tank will become a low-nutrient tank with better colored shrimp). Nobody can tell you how long it will take though. It all depends on how many nutrients entered your system via the substrate and rocks. If you read the sticky thread by "tooth" above you'll see that he hasn't fed his tank for over 5 years and he still has surface algae growing and lots of reproduction. His tank looked much worse than yours in the beginning though...totally covered in all kinds of algae and cyanobacteria.